I’m a researcher by nature. I don’t know if it’s my journalism background, or my endless curiosity that sends me down rabbit holes on Google that I dig myself out of hours later. When we started working on a trip to Norway, I spent an entire week planning three different itineraries. Norway is a huge country, and the diversity of its landscape left me with a puzzle of where we wanted to spend our (limited) time. 

You could easily spend 2-3 weeks in Norway and come nowhere near seeing the entire country. Our main considerations were the Lofoten Islands, even farther north (Alta/Svalbard), Øslo, and the West Fjords. Since most of my family’s heritage is from Sweden, we wanted to make a stop there too, but we realized quickly that it was too much to see in one trip. 

Once we started digging into pricing, we discovered we were late to the game for Lofoten. Most hotels and Airbnbs were snatched up 3-4 months out, and the remaining ones were quite expensive (for mediocre quality). After chatting with locals, I’m glad we didn’t go to the Lofoten Islands. We were told that they are overwhelmed in the summer with tourists. It might be a place we travel to in the shoulder season in the future. 

Because we used points with Delta, we were very limited with our flight itinerary. Copenhagen was really the only option that was reasonable (Øslo/Gothenburg were much more expensive). Since we had been wanting to visit Copenhagen, we decided to add it to our itinerary.

DAYS ONE + TWO

We flew out of Detroit, as our childcare is in Michigan 🙂 We connected through MSP, and the long leg was about eight hours to Copenhagen. We started our trip with two people coughing in the row behind us. Ever since the Covid-era and our Iceland trip, we get a touch anxious about getting sick on vacation. Thankfully, we were healthy our entire trip.

The Copenhagen airport was a breeze for customs/immigration. We decided to take the metro to our hotel, as a local friend told us that it’s the easiest way to get around town (do as the locals do!). She was right, and it was a quick trip to our hotel in Nordhavn. 

Copenhagen is a design mecca. I had a list of 15+ hotels and Airbnbs at one point that were all incredible, and we had the hardest time narrowing down. We ended up at Audo House, and we were thrilled with our pick. Audo is a high-end furniture brand based in Copenhagen, and Audo House is a showroom, cafe, and a small hotel with 10 rooms all furnished with their products. Our room was beautiful, cozy, and we loved the Nordhavn area. It seemed much quieter than other parts of the city.

Here are a few of the hotels/airbnbs that didn’t make the cut:

Airbnb II Indre By
Airbnb III Østerbro 
Airbnb IV Indre By 
Airbnb V Canals
Coco hotel
25 hrs 
Grand Joanne 
Zoku 
Villa copenhagen
Manon Les suites 
Kurhotel Skodsborg

We took a nap (thank you Audo for letting us check in early!) and then made our way to Aire Ancient Baths for massages and a soak. Swinging by a spa after a red eye has become a routine of ours on international trips.

Aire was incredible. The service was impeccable, and the soaking tubs were such a great experience. They had a tepid pool, hot pool (with two cold plunges attached), whirlpool, and a float pool (our favorite).

We were caught in the rain after our spa experience, so we found a restaurant nearby. Aaman’s Smørrebrød has a few locations in Copenhagen, and we were smitten with their open-faced sandwiches. Bonus, they had handmade GF bread that was celiac safe! We found a gelato restaurant on our walk and thoroughly enjoyed sea buckthorn ice cream. 

We stopped at the grocery store to grab a few essentials, as well as a bunch of sour candies and chocolate to take back home to the kids.

DAY THREE

We rented bikes from the hotel and biked to Schmith & Thunberg ApS, which is a dairy free and gluten free bakery. It was the first time I had been able to eat a chocolate croissant in about eight years since my celiac diagnosis. Heaven.

A friend of mine was in Copenhagen a few months prior to our trip, and he raved about an AI perfumery. We biked over to EVERYHUMAN, and, unfortunately, they were hosting a bachelorette party. We biked downtown to find lunch and became caught up in a Hanes Krishna parade. We ended up eating at PALAEO on the rooftop of a shopping mall because it was quick and actually quite good. I drooled over the Hay and Ferm storefronts. I could buy everything!

We made it back to the parfumerie before they closed. It was a fun experience. I filled out a personality questionnaire, and the app spit out a code for the machine. After the code was typed in, the machine made the perfume onsite. Their algorithm creates three perfumes, and then you have the option to tweak two of them. 

We then biked over to Jaegersbroggade in the rain. We accidentally biked through a park/cemetery on the way, and it was one of the prettiest cemeteries I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that every shop closes at 4:00. On Saturday! We sheltered from the rain in a game cafe and played Code Names with warm cappuccinos. 

We made our way to Nyhavn so that we could check it off our list. It was very touristy, and we didn’t spend much time there. We did enjoy going over to the island adjacent and exploring the neighborhoods and shops around there.

Copenhagen is serious about their food scene. They have 16 Michelin star restaurants (including two 3* restaurants!). As much as I was tempted to pull the trigger on a $800pp meal experience at Alchemist or noma, we were more reasonable and landed at Vaekst. We had one of our favorite meals here, and they were very accommodating of my food allergies.

Other restaurants we considered:

Esmee
Jatak
Theo 
Marv & Ben
L’enoteca di Brunello 
Anarki
No 2 
Pluto
Radio
Terra

I’ll never forget how terribly jet lagged we were this evening. Neither of us slept well. Around 3:00 a.m., the seagulls screeched loudly outside our window, which left us with a decision to close the window and trap in the summer heat (without A/C), or to keep it open while they played their asynchronous orchestra. I think we finally crashed around 4:00 a.m.

DAY FOUR

We had to make another stop at the GF bakeries before departing to Norway that afternoon. We biked to H.U.G. on the most beautiful sunny morning. I’ll never forget how amazing their chocolate chip cookies were!

We took the metro back to the airport, and the Norwegian Air check-in counter was about as far away as we could walk. After lugging our bags all the way back to security, we then had to walk (what felt like) miles to our gate. Ten minutes before departure, the gate changed to A gate, which was on the other side of the airport. I think we burned off all of our pastries that morning running through the airport.

Once we landed in Stavanger, we picked up our rental car. However, when we turned on the car, the tire pressure light was on. I went back to the desk, hoping they would give us a new car, and instead the attendant told me the mechanics would be on their way.

The mechanics told us that it was common for the sensors in the Toyota cars to be sensitive, although the tire did look a little flat. I asked for a different car, and we were SOL because we were not returning to Stavanger, and they didn’t have any other cars. We followed the mechanics to the repair center (not customer-facing), and they kindly filled up all of our tires, reset the tire pressure light, and wished us luck (without giving us a spare tire). We prayed that we would make it through our 12 hour drive through the remote mountains without getting a flat. Thankfully, the car held up until the last 30 minutes of our trip when the light came on again.

After that delay, we stopped in Stavanger, but it was pretty closed up for a Sunday. We picked up pizza at
Panzanella, and it hit the spot.

We drove to Karmøy and were smitten with Panoramahyttene on the cliffs overlooking the North Sea. It was evident that this spot takes in a bit of intense weather, and thankfully that evening was relatively calm. We hiked down to the ocean and made our way back after it started to rain (again). We had a relaxing evening and enjoyed some downtime. In retrospect, we wish we had another night at this hotel because it was one of our favorite spots on this trip.

Like Iceland, there is very little night in Norway in the summer. It would get dark-ish around 11/12 p.m., and the sun would come out again around 3/4 a.m.

DAY FIVE

We stopped at the beach down the road, and it was quite chilly for the morning. Brendan insisted on going for a swim, so he jumped in for a few minutes, but the current was strong.

We stopped in Haugesund for lunch and had a quick bite at Dattera Til Lothe. The food was fine, but we didn’t love the town. It was very touristy.

I believe we had an eight-ish hour drive through the fjords to get to Aurland. We were surprised by the 20+ mile long tunnels (with roundabouts!). There were tunnels and waterfalls everywhere. We even had a few car ferries to take on this journey! Even though it was a long drive, we thoroughly enjoyed the views of the fjords.

We arrived in Aurland just before our dinner reservation at Ete. Our hotel was brand new and had a great view of the fjord.

Ete was one of the most genuine farm-to-table experiences I had ever had. There were about seven tables in the restaurant with only one dinner service. The chef addressed us before the meal and told us about the fish they caught that morning, the chickens they corralled from the neighborhood, and the vegetables and strawberries they picked in their garden that afternoon. The food was phenomenal, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

DAY SIX

We started our morning with salami and stale GF bread. Brendan drove the winding, one lane road up the mountain to start our Prest hike. I had planned to hike via ferrata the following day, so I was leery to push my body too hard. I didn’t want to be fatigued for the climbing experience we had planned the next day.

The hike was moderate, and there were a few points where it felt like it wasn’t worth it to go to the top, especially since the view is the same the entire hike. However, I’m glad we made it to the pinnacle because we were surprised with a herd of goats at the top! One approached me like a dog and let me scratch his head.

We had a long drive left, but I was insistent that we made it out on the water, even if it meant driving late into the night. We found a paddle board shop in Flåm, packed sandwiches, and spent the rest of the afternoon on the water. It was lovely. We had many rainy, cloudy days in Scandinavia, but this one was one of the true “summer” days of the north.

I braved the glacial waters and jumped in. It was shock-to-the-system freezing…and totally worth the plunge. We admired the mountains that seemed to stretch beyond the clouds as we paddled along the crystal blue waters.

Our drive to Ålesund was just as stunning as our drive to Aurland. We arrived at our hotel around midnight and quickly crashed because we had an early start the next day.

DAY SEVEN

We had an early wakeup to drive to Åndalsnes. After hiking via ferrata in the Dolomites and falling in love with the experience, I knew I wanted another opportunity in Norway. We found a hiking center which had three different ferrata trails. Unfortunately, Brendan dislocated his shoulder a few weeks before our trip and wasn’t able to climb with me. He hiked two trails solo, while I went out with a guide and a man from Argentina.

The climbing experience was quite a bit different than the ferrata trail in Italy. In Italy, the iron pins were installed in the Alps during WWI as a means for soldiers to climb safely. This trail was much more modern, and the footholds were intentionally placed for each step, which made it easier than I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed the climb and the views of the fjord. I also don’t think I could have climbed anything more difficult because I was quite sore from our hike the day before.

After we finished the climb, our guide told us we could hike down the mountain (45 mins) or up to the top of the mountain and take the gondola down (45 mins). I was exhausted but determined to make it to the pinnacle. I crawled my way up the mountain, dripping sweat, as the sun blared down on the ridgeline. The gondola was ridiculously overpriced, but I enjoyed the hike, nevertheless.

We returned to Ålesund and shopped a little bit. Ålesund was one of the more touristy places we visited on our trip, and it wasn’t our favorite. We had a delightful meal at 1904 and crashed early. The design at 1904 was incredible. I was inspired by the mix of the historic elements with modern, Scandinavian design.

DAY EIGHT

After a lovely lunch at Dråpe Ålesund Kaffehus, we made our way to the airport to fly back to Copenhagen. We used our Marriott points to stay at AC Bella Sky. It was my least favorite hotel; however, I will say I’ve never seen a Marriott that large before.

Because we loved our time at Vaeskt, we decided to have our last meal at one of the sister restaurants. Høst was such a lovely experience, and the food was just as phenomenal as Vaeskt.

Thankfully, our trip home was uneventful. We truly enjoyed our time in Norway and Denmark and are hoping to return soon!